Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
by Dorus the Walrus
Summary: At the twilight of her life, Cordelia contemplates all of the men in it.


Author's Note – This is about all the special men in Cordelia's life: Angel, Doyle, Wesley, Xander, Kevin and the Groosalugg. Connor will not be included because I consider him a tool for Jasmine and I like to think that season never happened anyway.

**Goodbye Yellow Brick Road**

Angel was the love of Cordelia's life.

But she wasn't his.

All her life Cordelia had been waiting for that Knight in Shining Armor to come and sweep her off her feet. That's what happens to princesses, and Cordelia is a princess. While all the other girls in Sunnydale got socks and Barbies for their sixth birthday, Cordelia got ponies and diamond earrings. Didn't that make her a princess? Even when Cordelia started high school and was no longer a little girl, she still clung to her fantasy knight. After all, she had read all the stories, she knew the drill. Whenever she was in danger her Knight would appear. You could imagine her surprise when it turned out that a short, blonde girl named Buffy kept saving her life, instead of her dashing Knight.

But in the end Cordelia finally did get her Knight. When she fell victim to a vampire in Los Angeles it wasn't Buffy that saved her, but Angel. Angel was everything that Cordelia had dreamed about. He was handsome, he had money, and he always rescued her from bloodsucking vampires. He was a Knight and she was a Princess and she loved him. But she knew deep down that she wasn't the Princess for him. As she grew and matured Cordelia became more selfless, more caring. More like Buffy. She was just a replacement, she knew that. She knew Angel would never lose his soul for her because he didn't love _her_. Oh, he loved Caring Cordelia, the one that took to his son like his own mother. But there were other sides of Cordelia that just made Angel awkward and bemused. He couldn't love all of her, even if she loved all of him.

Cordelia figured that it would have been better if she had just settled with second best, instead of waiting around for a man who would always love someone else. She almost did once. She almost settled for Groo, who was a Knight in every literal sense of the word. But in the end he didn't want her either. While Groo was completely in love with her, she was still completely in love with Angel and he had known it. He left her, sacrificing himself so she could be happy with her one true love. It's a shame to know that his sacrifice had been in vain.

Groo hadn't been the only one Cordelia would have settled for. She would have settled for Doyle. He wasn't a Knight. He wasn't even close, but he could have been a good man. He was crass, and always in some sort of trouble, but Cordelia honestly believed that he would have changed for her as she would have for him. Not too much, though. Just to keep things interesting. But instead he decided to become a Knight when Cordelia, for the first time in her life, didn't want a Knight. She wanted him to be the cowardly Doyle he had always been, the one she loved.

Doyle's death had hit her hard, but there were other men in Cordelia's life. Living men. Wesley had been one of those men. Cordelia almost laughed at the expression Fred would have made if she ever knew that Wesley and Cordelia had made out a couple of times. Wesley was a wonderful man, and Cordelia imagined that she probably would have been happy living in England with Wesley in some musty old castle with a couple of Watchers-in-the-making of their very own. But she knew she would have never settled for him. Back in Sunnydale, Cordelia had been drawn to Wesley because he knew what it meant to be looked down upon by Buffy and Super Friends. Buffy was all Cordelia had left and she knew it was the same for Wesley, and Buffy's disdain for the both of them brought the two closer together. But in the end what little physical attraction there fizzled and all that was left was good friends. The bantered, they teased, Cordelia saved his life, Wesley saved hers, they cried, they poured their hearts out to each other, but they always remained more like brother and sister than Knight and Princess.

Xander had also been another love from Sunnydale. If she ever saw him again, she probably run in the opposite direction. It wasn't as though he was a bad guy. He just wasn't always a nice guy. And Cordelia knew a lot of that was her fault. It wasn't a relationship that would have lasted; she was a bitch, he was a jerk, and both had a large supply of raging teenage hormones. All of which resulted in a bad, bad mixture. Meeting Xander again would be hard. It would just remind her of time when she was someone she didn't like.

The only other person Cordelia would have settled for was Kevin. It wasn't as though they had a long relationship. They had only been dating for a month, but he managed to bring out something nice her. Well… nicer. It had been nice and normal and sweet. She would have grown into a soccer mom living in suburbia if she had settled with Kevin, which, considering what her life was like now, didn't seem like such a bad thing. But then the Master rose, and Kevin became just another casualty. Cordelia never seemed have much luck with men.

Even if she had settled for Kevin, or Doyle, or Wesley, Cordelia knew that she would have never been completely, and utterly happy. They just weren't Angel.

Which is why she came back to him for just one last kiss.

**Fin**


End file.
